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Thursday, February 7, 2013

EXAGGERATING REALITY

MOVIE REVIEW

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HITCHCOCK

by:

G.P. MANALO

Starring:

Anthony Hopkins

Helen Mirren

Scarlett Johansson

65% of the population may know who (or atleast familiar of )Alfred Hitchcock is, but the question to those 65% is that do they really know the person fully, the way he thinks or do things. With this new film based on the events on how he made his riskiest move in his career? does this offer any details on his persona?

Hitchcock - Tells how the famous and well known director, Alfred Hitchcock made the riskiest project of his career which is probably the most controversial and game changing movie of all time, Psycho. In making of this project, behind the scenes he have many troubles in his family, close friends and studio executives.

I have not always been a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock but that does not mean i hate the guy, I really appreciate his work even if I watched only two of his works (which is Psycho and Vertigo). But I wasn't very much familiar with Alfred Hitchcock himself, This movie on the other hand I can't really say if this movie really did show the humanity of Alfred Hitchcock, completely. I can't really say that this movie offers anything for people who is very unfamiliar with Alfred Hitchcock's works since it's not really a straight-up biopic that you may be expecting as how the Social Network focuses on how Facebook is made and how the people that are close to Zuckerberg are affected by it. Like the Social Network, Hitchcock is more on the things he went through this risk and how it affects the people around him as well. That being said, was the movie good on it's own? Even if I am unfamiliar with the man himself or his works that much, the movie on it's own is just good and enjoyable.

It must be difficult for the writers to replicate Hitchcock's persona, because as I've heard is that he was a rather complicated, unusual and sophisticated person, In this movie the way they wrote off Hitchcock having his own sanity where he sees Norman Bates around telling him what to do or giving him ideas of what's going on is more of an odd yet somewhat intriguing choice to do for the writers. Again, I'm very unsure of things if they are making it "accurate"even if some of the things that did happen here did happen in real life like the fact that Alfred Hitchcock ordered every bookstore to take out every copy of Psycho so that anyone won't know the surprises of the movie, or how Paramount rejects his idea of making this movie and ends up financing it himself. But beyond the fact that this is a behind the scenes drama of the making of Psycho it's actually also a romantic drama between Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville, to be honest i didn't see that part of the movie is one of those things that caught me off guard and I was actually interested in watching these two develop their relationship and also seeing those moments that i mentioned earlier after hearing many controversies about the movie. But it felt pretty weird to see these relationship and the Psycho thing to be in the background. that being said, it was more Alma's side of the story of how she is going through with his relationship and how she wants to have a stamp of her name at something. At first I thought that as the movie progresses, all these things happening the film doesn't really know where it wants to go, there wasn't a really good direction to it, things happen and they barely explored some stories and characters here and there. Some of the stories worked out on it's own, some weren't really clear.

The meat of the movie is definitely the cast, the cast made this movie to a performance piece and they are all uncannily cast and formed (with make-up), Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren carried this movie as Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville, delivering charm and cleverness in the movie. Anthony Hopkins was a joy to see as Hitchcock right from the beginning when he greeted the audience, how the make-up was constructed made him (almost) look like the man himself. But to be fair the supporting cast like Scarlett Johansson (Who is having a good year and uncannily cast to be as Janet Leigh), Jessica Biel ( for the little scenes she was in, she was pretty good), Danny Houston, Toni Collette and James D'Arcy (Also uncannily cast as Anthony Perkins) that being said, all of them were able to deliver their A-game.

In the end, Hitchcock is not really for the new but for those who have known the man and his works before, there are bits here and there that will make a Hitchcock fan happy, long time fans of Alfred Hitchcock may find this movie entertaining as the cast deliver their A-game. But I wouldn't really recommend you see this because you may think that this is a bio-pic of Alfred Hitchcock or something that will help you familiarize with the man himself. Getting that away, Stories of Hitchcock and Alma stabilizing their relationship and Hitchcock making Psycho shines on it's own but other stories are left off flat and weren't explored very well. The movie to me was pretty good, it's not the Oscar movie that i was expecting nor is it a bad movie as well.